Daily Archives: December 6, 2008

Times are tough and this has been a particularly rough week. Bad news personally and state budget cuts have the whole place just a bit freaked out. At times like these I often find myself enjoying The Sartorialist just a bit more. Here’s my favorite one from the last week:
Here’s the caption:

I was chit-chatting with Susan after I took this picture and mentioned that I thought her hair was sooo beautiful – her best feature.

She said thanks and added that she had lost her hair once because of cancer. She now purposely keeps it long because she feels it is such a gift to have it back and, for her, a sign of life.

Dear President Elect Obama,
I am encouraged to hear your commitment to renewing our failing economy. I am a biomedical scientist in the Department of Something at the University of Arizona. Under the Bush administration, as you know, federal science budgets have been cut (when inflation is accounted for) and the morale of the nation’s scientists is at an all time low. We are spending more and more time trying to find the funding to keep our laboratory operations going and we are desperately trying to hold onto our jobs and the jobs of the smart, hardworking people we employ. Our nation’s scientists and engineers are the driving force behind the innovation that can renew our nation’s economy. We are ready to commit to a new area of technological advancement in the biomedical, physical and energy sciences. While I am inclined to ask for broad increases in federal funding for the sciences, I have a much simpler request.

As I mentioned above, morale among scientists is at an all time low. Like so many other American workers, we are increasingly unsure if we will have a job tomorrow and we are increasingly being asked to lay-off the people that make our laboratories productive. We need to hear from you that your administration is going to make a long-term commitment to re-bolstering basic science research in this country. I realize that deciding where to allocate these important funds is a difficult decision, one that will take time and hard work. Those of us in the sciences understand this better than most. However, while these decisions are being made, we need to know that your administration will be there for us, helping to facilitated a new era in technological and basic science advancement in the United States of America. We are ready, I ask you to let us know that your administration is ready to enable us.

With my kindest regards, Juniorprof, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Something
The University of Arizona School of Medicine